Raising a genderless baby.

[WOM]

This article from Saturday's Toronto Star has blown into a full ruck about parenting. Apparently the Daily Mail has picked up on it, so it could be coming round your way.

If you read it, it'll either get you thinking and ponderous, or get you thinking and angry. I understand that most of the response has been the angry type. Oddly, the angrier it makes people (for goofy reasons) the more I find myself supporting the parents, where I was initially ambivalent.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Raising a genderless baby.

Great stuff, good on them. Anyone getting angry needs to fuck the fuck off.

[Wyatt Earp]

Raising a genderless baby.

Which category are you in if you think this is slightly silly and quixotic, but unlikely to do great harm?

I mean, precisely because I depart from the feminist line on the social construction of gender, I'm pretty sanguine that this stuff is unlikely to have much effect on where the kid ends up on the masculinity/femininity spectrum. It's not like cases of forced "gender reassignment", of which there have been some, and which do seem to end very badly.

[hobbes]

Raising a genderless baby.

I'm ambivalent. The parent seem like the sort of people I'd cross the street to avoid. But I do like the idea that we could have a world in which the tailnotail differentiation isn't so important. But then again, those kids are going to either get battered or end up in therapy.

[Er Liquidatore]

Raising a genderless baby.

Pretending that gender doesn't exist at all is just plain silly. It would be much better - in my opinion - that instead of denying the child's gender, they make sure that he/she isn't besieged by Barbie dolls or told to act in a particular way according to the gender he/she is. Sooner or later this person's gender is going to be very clear anyway. The fight against sexism and inequality isn't going to be won by pretending gender doesn't exist.

Calling the child Storm is a much worse offence, mind you. As is being called Witterick.

[Wyatt Earp]

Raising a genderless baby.

Calling it Nigel or Brenda would be a bit of a giveaway.

[Er Liquidatore]

Raising a genderless baby.

Not necessarily - if we're blurring the lines of gender surely any name would do. Then the parents and relatives could engage in a cat-and-mouse bluff and double bluff game of 'Guess The Gender'. Hours of fun.

[WOM]

Raising a genderless baby.

See, we're in that parenting hippy camp where we'll paint our son's toenails if he asks, and we tell our kids they can marry whoever they wish [boy or girl] or not get married at all. Drives the grandparents crazy, it does.

But I got the sense that this was more about the parents than it was about the kids. However, seeing the vitriol directed at them in the comments section, I'm squarely behind them now. If this riles the pinheads, it's probably a better idea than I'm giving it credit for.

[Er Liquidatore]

Raising a genderless baby.

That's the thing that does it for me too, WOM - it's the selfish hippy doing something to prove a point rather than for the benefit of the child. It's gender is going to reveal itself sooner or later - then what? If it's female (and I suspect it is)it's still going to have to deal with lower salaries, maternity leave (probably) and general all round inequality.

As an aside, can I just say that I really fucking hate hippies? Good.

[Jimmy Bignutz]

Raising a genderless baby.

They didn't have to go down the hippy names route, though, there are loads of names that fit both boys and girls - Terry, Jamie, Hilary, Leslie, Steve.

[Renart]

Raising a genderless baby.

Worn Old Carabela wrote:

See, we're in that parenting hippy camp where we'll paint our son's toenails if he asks, and we tell our kids they can marry whoever they wish [boy or girl] or not get married at all. Drives the grandparents crazy, it does.

But I got the sense that this was more about the parents than it was about the kids. However, seeing the vitriol directed at them in the comments section, I'm squarely behind them now. If this riles the pinheads, it's probably a better idea than I'm giving it credit for.

The people getting angry are ridiculous. I do worry a bit about the confusion the child might face when people outside the family start assuming it's either a boy or a girl. I imagine things will get sorted out pretty quickly, however, once they're old enough to ask questions.

Seems saner to me to acknowledge gender differences but not try to impose stereotypes. My wife and I try to do this. Some of it can't be helped, though, once they start going to school, but hopefully you encourage all of their interests early enough that stereotypes don't exert too much influence. My daughter likes frilly pink princess stuff and also collects bugs and snails and such.

[Borracho]

Raising a genderless baby.

There's Stevie Nicks, of course.

I briefly worked with a woman whose name was Enda. She may well have been the only female Enda in the entire country, and indeed the world.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Raising a genderless baby.

I'd never heard of Enda until this year. And when I did, I just thought it was a typo, and assumed a woman.

[Borracho]

Raising a genderless baby.

It's common enough here. There was an Enda (male) in my class at school.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Raising a genderless baby.

Where does the idea that "it's about the parents rather than the kid" come from?

[WOM]

Raising a genderless baby.

That's just the sense I get of them throughout the article. Everything seems a bit intentionally contrarian, and this is another way of demonstrating their contrarian-ness. They seem like one of those 'we're challenging society's assumptions' couples, which can get a bit tedious at times.

[Renart]

Raising a genderless baby.

Worn Old Carabela wrote:

That's just the sense I get of them throughout the article. Everything seems a bit intentionally contrarian, and this is another way of demonstrating their contrarian-ness. They seem like one of those 'we're challenging society's assumptions' couples, which can get a bit tedious at times.

The sort that puts a "Why Be Normal?" bumper sticker on their car . . . UPSIDE DOWN!

[DCI Harry Batt]

Raising a genderless baby.

Ok. I didn't get that impression at all.

[WOM]

Raising a genderless baby.

I'm down with a lot of the hippy stuff: the co-sleeping and buying used clothing and whatnot. But when you take your kids hiking in the foothills in Mexico to meet with the Zapatistas, you're upping the ante a bit.

[anton pulisov]

Raising a genderless baby.

I think my father once explained to me, when I was six, that girls had inside out penises.

I then asked him if one would fit into the other.

"WHO TOLD YOU THAT?!", was his response.

Nobody had told me, I thought of it myself. I guess it's hardwired into our brains when we are born.

These parents will be disappointed when they find out that millions of years of evolution are against them.

[linus]

Raising a genderless baby.

Contact with the outside world might be actually helpful in the case of that family hiking in Mexico... Outside of western enclaves like N. America (-Mexico) and parts of western Europe, people have mostly gotten by with traditional values.

One of the many good things about immigration (which is huge in a place like Toronto) is that it helps recenter local cultural values to saner and more timeless standards. You just know there are going to be Russell Peters skits about this...

[WOM]

Raising a genderless baby.

I think what they're doing is trying to avoid people talking to/talking about/treating the child differently based on its gender. I don't have an issue with that. Some of the language used by the parents is a bit frustrating, though. "You don't get to know a person by asking what's between their legs", etc.

Yeah... that's exactly what I'm doing when I say "Oh, is it a boy or girl?' They'd rather I learn by asking its views on the Cuban revolution.

[WOM]

Raising a genderless baby.

linus wrote:

...is that it helps recenter local cultural values to saner and more timeless standards.

...like arranged marriages, Sharia law and honour killings.

[delicatemoth]

Raising a genderless baby.

This is the bit that jumps out at me - "Friends said they were imposing their political and ideological values on a newborn."

What, and going along with the entrenched, alienating and inadequate gender binary is not imposing political and ideological values?

But then again, those kids are going to either get battered or end up in therapy.

Things that often tend to happen to gender-variant people, however they're brought up. Such difficulties more often stem from people and institutions who are enthusiastically supportive of the gender status quo than those who advocate something more flexible and open-ended.

Sooner or later this person's gender is going to be very clear anyway.

Probably, but not certainly. Not everybody fits into the binary.

[Sean of the Shed]

Raising a genderless baby.

I get the impression that they are just letting their kids go with their feelings, rather than imposing their beliefs in a Viz Modern Parents style, though I'd be interested to see whether they have the same approach if Jazz (Jazz? The twats. That's as likely to get him a beating as anything else) decided he wanted to play Ice Hockey or join the Scouts.
At a young age why not just let the kids be what they want to be without any pressure, it's the way all creatures are built. Young animals show no gender specifics when they play until the hormones kick in, it's only then that the males will begin to act out fights and sexual activity.
I can certainly understand everyone who finds themselves supporting them purely on the response of others. My 2 year-old nephew sometimes likes to push a little pram around and put jewellery on, all he's doing is copying his older sister, but my brother-in-law is a bigoted toss-pot, and went mad when he found out. Normally I couldn't care what people decide to be, but a part of me would like my nephew to come out and my niece to bring home a black or Asian boyfriend, just so we can watch as his* head turns purple and explodes.

Edit - *My brother-in-law's head, not the black or Asian boyfriend's.